2020 will definitely be a year to remember, not only for the Coronavirus pandemic causing mass shut downs and shelter in place orders that have swept the world, but also for the vast inequalities it has helped to shed light on. A disproportionate amount of Black Americans have died from COVID-19 than whites or other ethnic groups. Black Americans represent 13.4% of the US population, but over 60% of the deaths from the virus. How is this even possible? After all, “The virus knows no race or nationality; it can’t peek at your driver’s license or census form to check whether you are black. Society checks for it, and provides the discrimination on the virus’s behalf. The effects of that discrimination are found in the morgues.”

Disparities could be due to inequalities in access to health care. However, a much more likely reason is the systematic, structural, and institutionalized racism that has plagued this country for the past 400 years. To exacerbate these glaring inequalities is the continued news cycle of Black people dying at the hands of police and white supremacists. And now, months later, an uprising has begun.